Mulher de Meus Sonhos

I'm also a captive-fan of this movie. I watched it when I was 12 and I really didn't understand at all, but while I was growing I remember and learned many things about this movie and I kept yearning to watch again the movie or read Peter Mendelsohn's novel. As others commentaries I remember it as a dream or as a fantasy that perhaps never watched. There is a comment in the movie that I'll remember forever, the old man who Vincent suspect has Marianne imprisons tell him "nowadays there are no ogres keeping Princess, there are only old men with cloudy eyes by the tears" or something like that. Can someone help me find one or another, novel or movie? In the case of the movie I'll prefer the french version with English or Spanish subtitles or the English version and in the case of novel I'll like French, English or if exist Spanish version. Thank you.

Style, setting, lighting, and mood are the strong points of this coming of age film, replete with youthful exuberance, faith, yearning and near fairy-tale trappings. However, once you get beyond mood and atmosphere, the film, upon reflection, is quite pedestrian in its plot and dialogue. I first saw this film when I was 12 years old, and it made a major impression on me. I've never seen it screened anywhere else (and I've had serious arguments with very knowledgeable buffs about whether or not it actually existed), and, honestly, I don't know if I ever want to see it again and risk losing that sense of youthful wonder.

In a world as black as Duvivier's,"Marianne de ma jeunesse" seems like an anomaly.This movie was looked upon,for a while, as the film equivalent of Alain-Fournier's "le grand Meaulnes",but as so many movies of the fifties,it was overshadowed by the impending coming for the nouvelle vague.

Hindsight displays its charms.Pierre Vaneck portrays a young romantic high school student,in a remote castle on the misty banks of a lake.Across the lake,there lives a mysterious beautiful woman who seems to be in jeopardy.The atmosphere is dreamy,and the audience sometimes stops and wonders whether the story is a fairy tale or not.Sandwiched,in Duvivier's work,between two very noir films ,"l'affaire Maurizius" ,and "voici le temps des assassins" -which I urge everybody to see if he can-,"Marianne " seems like a truce, a quiet place where the man's soul remains chaste and pure.

The black and white cinematography is close to perfect.

Previous comments on this film that I have seen describe it as having a 'dreamy' character, with which I totally concur. It is indeed a young man's fantasy, my remembrances of it leaving me with feelings of profound melancholy; other reviewers have stated that they first saw it at the approximate age of 12 and of being totally captivated and romantically moved by it; surprisingly, these are my recollections of it, myself. I, too, saw it at about the same age, and I also recall being equally moved by the content of the film and the beauty as well as another quality about the lead actress, Marianne Hold,...something I remember as haunting and ephemeral...difficult to define. Many years later, I find that I am motivated to view it once again...and, this time, to read the book upon which it is based, as well. Will I find it equally captivating as I did decades ago, or will I find my memory of those 1950s and 1960s viewings, when I was able to find the B&W film on late-night-television, far exceeds their reality? (Does this description equally epitomize the anticipation vs. the reality of other aspects of one's physical/corporeal life? I wonder.)

This strange romantic fantasy is entrancing at times, but overall it feels like an elongated Twilight Zone episode, with a vague payoff. There might be some Oedipal (in Vincent's fixation on his - unseen - mother) and homosexual (in Manfred's fixation on Vincent - he never stops singing his praises throughout the movie) implications, but with the censorship restrictions of the era, it's hard to know for sure. Or maybe these things are intentionally left up to the individual interpretation of each viewer. **1/2 out of 4.